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My Recent Bake

My Recent Bake

Here are my recent baked croissants. I use SteveB recipe posted by Akiko (Thank you so much Akiko). I have a small kitchen and I have to do folds/rolling on a large white cutting board on top of my sink so I use half of the original recipe for my tiny space. I change a couple’s thing:

-I use only milk in my final dough, I also reduce milk hydration in my dough since I use mix of bulk organic AP flour leftover from my cupboard, I cannot tell the exact amount since I go by hand feel.

-I increase the total roll-in butter amount to 125g (for half recipe) because I use ziplock bag to sheet my butter. A tiny amount of butter will stick to the ziplock bag, so I think the overall butter will be less than 125g (for half recipe).

-I roughly hand mix my dough, put the dough into refrigerator for a couples hours before enclosing fat into dough because I’m quite lazy to pull out my mixer and I don’t feel like kneading the dough either.

-I baked half croissant the same day I shaped them and I also retarded half of them for the next morning bake. I shaped my croissants very tight. I was shock to see the result varying with different crumb structures. Perhaps my same day shaped and baked croissants needed more time to proof in order to get open crumb, anybody has any idea?

(Shape and bake same day)

-I do all the turns in one day and I take a long rest (3~4 hours) in between the turns. I’m very careful with my dough during the entire process; I don’t want them to proof too much during the turns, I think I will get a big air pocket in the my final products.

-I put my rolling pins and cutting board inside the fridge before I even make my croissant dough and keep all the tools inside all the times till I’m done with shaping. I used to live in hot and humid SE Asia country and I use this method to prepare my puff pastry dough.

-I use local European style butter instead of plugra and my friends really like local butter by comparison. I bake two batches of croissants to do the comparisons.

Lastly, TFL has a good discussion about croissants, herehere are the links especially Andy post.

English is my third language so if there're any mistakes please bear with me. Thanks

Those look very good!! I have never made croissants before, but I want to now. :) Wow. Those look awesome. If you don't mind my asking, what is your native tongue? And what other languages do you know, since English is your third one? :) just curious!

My native tongues are Japanese and Chinese, but I grew up in Germany so I speak German too. My family moved back to Malaysia when I was 16 so I have to learn Malay and English as well. I still think my croissants have room for improvement, thank you for the nice word on my photography.

You are the winner of perfect croissants!! Your croissants are my new goal :) I don't know if I can shape like yours. You must be very paitient!!

I have one question, Kimmy. Do you put some dump towels or something to avoid the dough get dry when you keep the dough in a refrigerator? Because my dough's surface is always starting to dry when I put it in a refrigerator for a couple hours.

I think you will do fine with shaping; you did some really beautiful shaping here, you are right about patience is the main key to produce nice croissants. My dough was not dried at all; I covered my dough with bun pan covers.

Here is another picture showing my dough just came out of the fridge for final proof.

Hmmm... It looks really perfect, Kimmy. You got some special skills. How many folds did you make? When I make 3 times folds, I can't press down and make a long big rectangle shape before cutting into a triangle shape. That is really tough.. May be I use bread flour instead of All purpose flour. Next time I use All purpose flour.

Could you tell me the length and the width of the triangle shape? It looks very long to roll 4 times.

I think you are talented baker too. I did 3 turns for my dough. Do rest your dough quite a bit before you roll out for shaping, I rest mine for 4~5 hours. I think you may try AP flour in the future. My triangle shape is roughly 4in*9 in (cut shape), I stretch them before roll them in shape so they are even bigger.

The croissants are light but I think I prefer almond croissants or chocolate croissants with a cup of tea. Maybe you can buy croissants from 吳寶春shop because he did prepare a special room for making laminated dough, the room is very cold and the baker has to wear winter coat inside to do all the turns.

Thanks. I learned from my previous puff pastry experience, I threw couples puff pastry dough into trash bin before I realized that patience was the key to success. You always bake gorgeous breads especially your recent 66% rye breads. I believe you can easily handle the croissant dough without problem, I hope to see your beautiful products in the future.

Beautifully done Kim. Thank you for sharing your butter handling method, very creative. I think many of us have space limitations that make it hard to produce a full size batch. As you so artfully display the results from your small kitchen, I have to say, "Bravo".

Thanks for your kind words. My friend was complained by her neighbor when she pounded her butter for laminated dough last year. I do worry my neighbors will knock on door since I live in a very old apartment. I also got the idea from a lot of Asian baking book especially cookies recipe where you normally flatten your cookies dough and then refrigerator the dough for a couple hours before cut into desire shape and bake.

I’m handling a small amount of butter (125g), I don’t think pounding the butter will do any good for my case (will be quite messy). Actually you can do the butter in zip lock in advance so less thing to worry when you mix your croissant dough later. I prefer to prepare my butter a day ahead so they are cold and easy to take out from the zip lock bag(use scissor cut the top and two corners and you are good to go) . Please remember to press the air out while rolling. Thank you for your attractive croissants in your recent posts, very inspiring.

I think you can use sourdough as you like but I will add instant yeast in my final dough to make sure everything is on the right track since I do put so much work on my dough. I’m not sure how is your sourdough acts? My sourdough doesn’t like sugar and fats at all, so I’m scare to try the sourdough version perhaps later in my baking experiments.

Croissants in the glass indeed needed more time to proof, my friends also had the same thought as well. Thanks you for the concentrated butter [moisture level < 0.1%] info. My oven is on hot side so I’m quite worried to try croissant at first hands because I did burn a few cake before.

these are beautiful! My excuse for not attempting laminated dough has always been that my kitchen is 32 degrees celsius and humid, and that i'll get my butter in other ways.

Do you live in Msia? I have refrigerated mixer bowl, tart tin, rolling pin and flour before when making tarts on especially hot days or when i feel like being finicky. And i have come across the ziploc bag trick in Rose Levy Beranbaum's book. Do you have any other tricks for beating the temperature?

I have a thick plastic cutting board (1 inch I think ) bought back from oversea, I keep the board in my fridge all times when I’m doing laminated dough perhaps you can find some kind of food safe marble for your dough. The other option is to bring your dough into ac room to do all the rolling work. I did prepare a few laminated dough back home in Malaysia and they turned out great.

Keep everything cold is a must in the hot and humid weather, for croissant dough you may even want to consider reducing the amount of yeast in the recipe. The zip lock bag method is quite old, my mom used to flatten her cookies dough in the same manner but using food grade plastic bag at least 30 years ago. I don’t own Rose Levy Beranbaum's book so I cannot comment on the matter. I don’t live in Malaysia right now.

Thanks. I think I should clarify what I mean I need to improve more on the my croissants is that I do need to watch out my final proof time frame carefully(see the glass croissants – need more time to relax before bake :)

Hi.. This post might be abit late but i hope someone is able to answer me though.. I am living in singapore and all year round the weather is hot and humid.. I understand that you need alot of resting time and be quick with the laminating of dough.. but what about final proofing? the weather here can hit up to 30 plus degrees during the day and the best temperature for final proof is between 22-25C.. can i do the final proof in the fridge? any advices?

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